Chief Looks Back At More Than Three Decades Of Service
August Will See Retirement Of Fire Chief Milo Bennett
CENTERVILLE / LINO LAKES / CIRCLE PINES - "Over the years, if no one else can handle it, they call us."
That's the experience of Centennial Fire District chief Milo Bennett, who is embarking on his last few months in the job before heading into retirement in August.
Photo by Louise Edwards
He is due to be succeeded by Jerry Streich, currently the fire marshal and assistant fire chief of the city of Ramsey, who was unanimously approved for the job by the cities of Centerville, Lino Lakes and Circle Pines at meetings during the week commencing May 26.
Bennett has seen it all in his 35 years in the fire service, 18 of which have been spent as the chief of the Centennial Fire District.
"I can remember an incident where a horse got stuck in the mud - I think we had a couple of those," he recalled.
"We used hose straps around the body and we couldn't get out to it any other way except for 10 of us to haul the horse out."
It wasn't an easy baptism for the former vice president of an auto parts chain, arriving at the Centennial Fire District in 1990, just five years aft er the creation of the department, which was formed by a merger.
Centerville and Circle Pines had previously had their own respective fire departments, while Lino Lakes contracted its service out to Centerville and Lexington.
As the first full-time chief of the district, it was Bennett's job to pull together a department he considered still not to have fully coalesced since the merger.
"When I came here, I found a really good group of people," said Bennett. "We had to work together a little more than we were perhaps used to.
"But I found that the firemen who were here were really good people.
"Also, the citizens and the city councils have really treated us well, with respect, and they appreciate the work that my people do."
Bennett and an inspector are the only two full-time members of staff in the department.
He has an "almost full-time secretary," but everyone else is a volunteer. In the world of firefighting, that means firefighters get paid per call, at a fairly minimal hourly rate.
In Centennial Fire District, there are anywhere from 40 to 44 of these volunteer firefighters at any one time, answering 1,000 calls a year between them.
When Bennett started as chief, that figure was just 300 calls annually. He puts the increase down to a variety of factors, ranging from a doubling in population of the three cities and a change in the demographics of the area (from a rural to more suburban setting) to the increased use of smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors (resulting in more alarms sounding without cause and calls from people misinterpreting lowbattery beeping for an alert).
Fire prevention and detection has become such a part of everyday life, in fact, that just over two-thirds of the fire department's work is actually responding to medical emergencies rather than fires.
The remaining third consists of "a few real fire calls," carbon monoxide detectors going off , vehicle accidents, gas leaks and general service calls. Not to mention those accident-prone horses.
Two particularly tragic incidents stick out in Bennett's memory from his tenure at Centennial Fire District.
The first was the cases of an elderly woman who lived at Main Street and Lake Drive in Lino Lakes and who died in a fire about six years ago.
"She was an elderly lady who lived alone, and the call came in when the neighbors saw the flames through the woods," recalled Bennett. "There was not much of a chance for us."
The second was the death of Lino Lakes police offi cer Shawn Silvera, who was killed on the highway in September 2005, hit by a motorist fleeing police as Silvera laid stop sticks in an attempt to halt the chase.
"We considered him our friend, as well," said Bennett. "It's always a tragedy when we go to an accident scene where there's a loss of life."The best part of his job, however, says Bennett, is those situations where his department can make a diff erence - sometimes between life and death.
"The most rewarding thing is when we can turn a tragic situation into a positive," he explained. "Over the years, my people have had several saves from cardiac arrests.
"Those are always the most rewarding. A lot of the medicals we do are positive things - maybe not to the same degree, but they are all positive."
And as to the future? Well, Bennett says he intends to head north eventually, to his lake house, but says he plans to continue to keep busy, either teaching in the fire business or finding some form of voluntary work.
"I'm surely going to miss the firemen and the job," he added. "This is 35 years as a firefighter. It's just time."
* Watch for an interview with the incoming fire chief, Jerry Streich, in a future edition of The Citizen.